~ Author

Category Archives: Writing

Days ago I was reading an article discussing the dissatisfaction of several fans of the book, “Hunger Games”, with the casting of African-American actors/actresses in the recently released hit film based on the book as some of their favorite characters:

This along with all of the racially charged current events that are happening in America right now made me think of the ways that race has played into my actual life as a new author and how it concerns the life of my characters themselves.

An African-American friend of mine was reading my book and must have read some minor implication as to the race of a character when she turns and looks at me with an expression of total shock and says,

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If you are a writer…an actor, a painter or even a teacher for that matter you know how it feels to be frustrated with your work, everyone does. I can’t speak for everyone else but as a writer I feel even more frustrated because there are no screaming kids, no condescending director, absolutely no one to be frustrated with except yourself and an inanimate object, the computer. Usually, frustration sets in at those times when it is just you and the computer and you are staring at a page full of words that do not make sense or a page of no words while you wrestle with your brain in an attempt for it to string together one relatively cognizant thought. There are many solutions, drink a bottle of scotch, eat an entire pint of cookies and cream (both of these are personal favorites, just don’t do them at the same time…I speak from horrific personal experience), but in college I learned of another, more interesting avenue, more creative and less self-destructive.

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All of my adult life I have wanted to write a novel, but never had the amount of courage and/or motivation in the right amounts, at the right times to move the project forward. As I brought in the 2011 New Year, I made a resolution to write a book as I had done several times in the past, but this particular year, I decided to get some outside assistance. I began surfing the net with terms such as “writing a novel” and I found some websites that motivated me to put the pen to the page…and keep it there.

The first and most important thing that I learned on day one from the following website was that, “writers write”, which sadly enough is not as obvious an idea as it seems.

This reminded me of a hilarious dialogue between two of the characters on my favorite television show, which went something like…

Blanch: I have writer’s block

Dorothy: Well tell me, what have you written so far?

Blanch: Nothing, that’s how I know I have writers block.

Dorothy: You have to have written to have writer’s block…or else we all have it.

– The Golden Girls

I knew that I did not have writer’s block because I had written several things in the past, in high school and college and I was full of imagination, but I had not written anything recently and it was not for lack of ideas, it was simply a lack of motivation.

I was one of those “writers” who had to feel inspired in order to write something, but this phrase made me realize that was a copout and if I was truly a writer I had to write until I felt inspired…and then write some more. I came to the realization that the only thing that I needed to begin writing my novel was the motivation to write something, anything, even if it wasn’t great, even if it didn’t flow right, even if the plot was not completely solidified, etc.

First, I started with a fiction story about the complicated relationships between women, but found myself getting stuck at different points in the plot, but I remembered what I learned on day one, “writers write”. Determined not to give up, I thought that maybe writing a book of short stories was a challenge more suited to me at the time…still a book, right? I wrote two stories that I thought were decent and began the third story, which was a tale about the disappearance of a teenage girl and how it affected the lives of her close-knit group of friends. Every day the story became longer until one day I woke up to my computer and decided that this was my novel. Without the motivation to keep writing, despite the obstacles, I would have never reached the finish line.

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Long ago I realized that I had a deep love of reading which soon grew into a love of writing. I always thought that one day I would write the great American novel, after I ran a marathon and traveled all over the world, of course. After some years I realized the last two things on my list probably would not happen anytime soon and I decided to go for the first. I have always loved books, stories and movies in the horror/thriller genre, but as an adult I also grew to love fiction books that explore love, family relationships and human behavior in an array of daily conditions.

Over the years I sat at my desk in sporadic bouts of determination to reach my goal and tried to churn out classic literature that would compete with Toni Morrison or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but soon realized that I was consistently up against a brick wall and I wondered why. I realized that in order for me to change my unsuccessful luck at writing a book I had to figure out the problem. After deep, sometimes harsh self-reflection I realized that I did not have any earthly idea of what I was trying to write about. I love to read great fiction literature, but I did not quite understand the anatomy of the story:

– The characters

– The struggle

– The flow

– The conclusion

Every type of story has an anatomy and working with this anatomy is what makes writers of that genre unique and different, but being able to adhere to the anatomy is what makes the story possible.

Horror/thriller fiction, I knew. I could recite the Nightmare on Elm Street nursery rhyme before I knew my ABC’s. I have been watching horror movies ever since I could sit up and I understood completely how the story was supposed to work. Years of trying to write a classic piece of fiction had failed, but when I finally sat down, waved my white flag and wrote about something I knew, “the words poured forth like liquid from a stream”.

I will always be on a mission to conquer all genres, but I am very happy with the accomplishment of finishing my first novel in horror/thriller fiction.

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The foundation of a love for writing is a love for words. I love words.

As a word lover, the dictionary is one of my best friends. Years ago I signed up to receive the “Word of the Day” from my favorite online dictionary. Every evening when I sit down to my computer to write, as part of a regular routine, I first, check my emails and read my “Word of the Day”. I say the word and momentarily study its various definitions. For years I vowed that I would expand my vocabulary by incorporating the new word into my everyday conversations.

God love me, I tried, but integrating new and foreign words into my somewhat simple everyday language was not easy. Sometimes I felt the word was too vocabulicious (just too extravagant/funky for everyday use), sometimes the word didn’t feel right at any point in the day and sometimes I just plain old forgot. Frustration would set it because another beautiful word was going to slip away from me without getting its due use but there was a reasonable solution right in front of me. Using a new word in my conversations everyday was difficult for a number of reasons, but there was no reason why I couldn’t use it in my everyday writing.

Yes! Duh! Happy dance!

When I began my first novel, The Secret Keepers, I began what I call, Word Sailing. Word Sailing is using my “Word of the Day” in my everyday writing (I could just say that but Word Sailing is cuter). I termed it Word Sailing because looking at my new “Word of the Day” is like discovering a new island. It is different, exciting and has endless possibilities. As you can imagine some days introducing a particular word into your story can be harder than others depending on the word but I make it happen with words as common as “darling” to words as vocabuliscious as “tarantism”.

Writing is an intimate process and when I use a specifically chosen word, I get to know it in a way that is otherwise challenging. After reading, revising editing and re-reading my story a number of times the word is not one that is simply forgotten after a few days. Don’t get me wrong, all words do not make the final cut and sometimes no matter how hard I try a particular word has no place in my story and has to be removed but that is of little consequence because by the time I make that determination, the word is mine, I know it. With every story I become familiar with a host of new words that may or may not end up having a place in that particular tale but gain a home inside of me that make the opportunities for its future use boundless.

JeanNicole Rivers

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Recently, I completed my very first novel, The Secret Keepers. The Secret Keepers is the first book in what will be a series of eerie tales that take place in the fictional small American Midwest town of Black Water.

Horror is my favored genre and I did not want do it a disservice by writing another meaningless slasher tale with too much sexual innuendo, corny humor and no substance, what else is there to horror some people might ask themselves and that is the point at which I began.

Horror as a genre is important because it targets one of our most powerful emotions, fear. Our fears affect our lives in a variety of ways from the careers we choose; to the superstitions in which we believe all of the way to the ways we raise our children.

Before I began writing I asked myself one very important question, what are you afraid of?

Secrets.

In my years I have kept small secrets and I have also kept some fairly large ones, but there are some that are so crushing, so perverse that if you don’t let them out, they haunt you from the inside out.

There is an intrinsic good to the spoken truth, which is why keeping a dark secret that should never be kept can drag one to the brink sanity.

In Black Water everyone is keeping secrets but a gruesome discovery forces some to reveal their secrets or be ripped apart by them.

Before you sit down to write your next story, whether it is fiction or not ask yourself,

What scares me? Incorporate this fear into your story and it will hook people. If it scares you, you can bet it will scare us too.